Important Notice

The present lot is a diptych in which the two panels mirror each other. It is a continuation of the imagined landscapes of Padamsee's "Mirror Image" series, offering a glimpse into his meditations on time, space and the duality of perception and reality through form, colour and texture.

Segueing from the Metascapes he painted in the 1970s, Padamsee began working on the "Mirror Image" series in 1994. The idea of the mirror-image as a... The present lot is a diptych in which the two panels mirror each other. It is a continuation of the imagined landscapes of Padamsee's "Mirror Image" series, offering a glimpse into his meditations on time, space and the duality of perception and reality through form, colour and texture.

Segueing from the Metascapes he painted in the 1970s, Padamsee began working on the "Mirror Image" series in 1994. The idea of the mirror-image as a device struck the artist during his first experiments with printmaking, when he saw the impressions created from a plate that he had engraved. He recalls, "I was surprised to note that the print made from the plate I had etched did not resemble the original. The gestalt had changed. I started using a mirror when working on the plate to figure out what the print would look like. Looking at my face in this mirror, I realized that what I saw was a mirror-image, as unfamiliar as the print from the etched plate." (as quoted in Meher Pestonji, Akbar Padamsee: Mirror-Images, Mumbai: Pundole Art Gallery, 1994, unpaginated)

Exploring the relationship between an image and its reflection further, Padamsee noted how the two could be so similar and yet so different. Endless and eternal, the mirror-images " ...include both a truly detached and analytical approach and a fascination for tautological rules. In the paintings the image prods the exercise, form being distilled to reveal the ore. Curiously the endeavour is as old as it is modern: the artistic pursuit of a philosophical intent." (Mala Marwah, Lalit Kala Contemporary 23, New Delhi: Lalit Kala Akademi, 1979, p. 36)

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